30 October 2010

Auberon Waugh (1939-2001) has been compared to Jonathan Swift. He was an outrageous satirist who slaughtered whole herds of sacred cows and turned people's heartfelt convictions on their heads. The best of his writing, collected here, is as timeless as Gulliver's Travels and has much power to outrage as the day it was written. Auberon Waugh is a master of the art of going too far, but above all, he was very funny. Kiss Me, Chudleigh is a collection of Waugh's best writing. It is also a compact biography. It consists of excerpts from the things he wrote, drawn from every stage of his career, from the Catholic Herald to Private Eye, the Spectator, the Daily Telegraph and the Literary Review. Arranged both chronologically and thematically, marrying his main preoccupations with the main phases of his life: school (where he received a record number of beatings); university (he came down from Oxford after one year, without a degree); Fleet Street (where he cut his teeth writing captions for the Sunday Mirror's bathing beauties); France (where he lived while writing his second novel, and returned regularly throughout his life); the House of Commons (where he won his spurs as a political correspondent); Grub Street (where he found his comic voice, writing for Private Eye); Somerset (where he made his home) and Abroad (from war reporting in Biafra to travel writing in Bangkok).

4 comments:

It is a pity that Auberon Waugh's work is not more readily available from most bookshops or libraries. I read his son's account of the illustrious family and really enjoyed it:http://www.amazon.com/Fathers-Sons-Autobiography-Alexander-Waugh/dp/0767927486/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1288585615&sr=8-1